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As both a residential and commercial real estate investor, Dave Seymour has become one of the most recognizable experts in his field.
His unabridged passion for business and real estate put him on the radar of A&E television network as well as multiple news organizations including CBS, ABC, CNBC, FOX News, and CNN. The New York Times reported that Dave Seymour’s series ‘Flipping Boston’ posted the highest ratings ever for the A&E network at the time of airing.
Dave has been sought after as a ‘tell it like it is’ mentor and motivator in the real estate world with a track record of unmatched success everywhere he reaches.
Dave Seymour has been investing in multifamily properties for years now, but he really started taking it seriously after attending seminars and following the advice of those who knew what they were talking about.
The first step is always education; without that there’s no results-driven strategy. To make sure you’re learning from both successes as well as mistakes, Dave suggests being willing to ask uncomfortable questions to educate and not speculate.
Stay tuned as Dave Seymour will share his multifamily investing expertise with you in this informative and entertaining episode!
In This Episode
- Dave Seymour’s background and how he started.
- Dave’s aspiration and advice for wealth creation.
- Dave’s analysis on the benefits of investing in multifamily.
- Dave’s philosophy to accelerate your wealth strategy.
Hey everyone, welcome to Today’s Show on Weath Strategy Secrets. Today, we’re joined by Dave Seymour, a nationally recognized real estate expert and star of A&E’s Flipping Boston. Dave is both a residential and commercial real estate investor.
Dave has become one of the most recognizable experts in his field. His unabridged passion for business and real estate put him on the radar of an A&E Television Network as well as multiple news organizations, including CBS, ABC, CNBC, Fox, and CNN. The New York Times reported that Dave Seymour’s series Flipping Boston posted the highest ratings ever for the A&E network at the time of airing.
Dave has been sought after as a tell-it-like-it-is mentor and motivator in the real estate world with a track record of unmatched success everywhere he reaches.
Dave, my friend welcome to the show.
Hey Dave Walcott thanks for having me brother, how are you?
You bet, no it’s so good to connect Dave, I know it’s definitely been a while so, really looking forward to this interview and I know for a lot of folks out there who aren’t really familiar, you know with your background or what you know you guys are doing.
You know, maybe you can kind of kick us off with your story and how you got into real estate and investing intangible assets?
Yeah, sure man, it’s been an interesting journey for sure. It’s like it goes through various phases you know for brokers, a joke to figuring something out to implementing what I figured out and then tell him my personal finances around but, look I’ll keep it kind of succinct there’s a disconnect.
I think between a lot of the the information that’s out there when it comes to capital and wealth and security and you know of the all of the things that we we kind of take for granted. I think as Americans I’m a immigrant to the states I came from from England back in 1986 and I came from a very blue-collar background.
We didn’t have any money, I was broke but I didn’t know it. All I needed was a soccer ball and a patch of green grass and it was on like Donkey Kong you know, we went out when the sun came up and we came home when the sun went down, and you know we just lived our childhoods as kids but it never involved anything around financial education or capital movement or understanding anything from from a standpoint or position of wealth and for me I paid a pretty heavy price for that because all I knew how to do was trade time for money, right.
Please understand this Dave and anybody who listens to us none of my thesis or philosophies are born in morality, okay? They’re not right or wrong good or bad up or down I think as human beings we get to a point of either being sick and tired and then we change, we’re forced into change or we accept failure and mediocrity and and you know, just live our life and again not based in morality, but look, I always get asked this question so many times and and I try and be succinct with it, but it’s got so many rabbit holes that I could go down.
Basically I was always edgy man, I was discontented like I knew like I wasn’t a good employee day, I mean I I wasn’t great at taking taking direction from others especially when I know I was smarter than them and better looking than them, but you know I found myself in a position where you know, because I had very little financial education in the sense of being able to to understand the movement of money you know, I was in debt I was in my late 20s early 30s.
I was working as a firefighter and a paramedic just north of Boston Mass, loved that job loved, it you don’t do it for financial freedom you do it for other reasons probably because you’re a little bit crazy, but I was working three jobs fire department construction on my days off and then retail security work in the evenings and not because I loved working 120 hours a week.
I just needed to create enough income to at least try to make my monthly bills, so my personal financial journey has been a show to be frank with you. I don’t know if we’re allowed to say but I said it, if you gotta beep it, out beep it out, it’s pretty mild for me and I paid a price for that and the price was you know marriages and you know lack of connection to people that cared for me and who I cared for.
It was a pretty dark time anyway, I’m standing on the precipice of pre-foreclosure in my primary residence I had some unsecured credit card debt that needed to be addressed and I was listening to the radio I was in my pickup truck I might have been on a job site or something and a commercial came on the radio and this was 2006 late six maybe early seven we hadn’t quite got our teeth kicked in yet and it was teach me foreclosure a free one and a half hour seminar coming to your neck of the woods and with my experience in construction, and I say experience, I mean, I was a horrible contractor.
I doubt I did better dealing with people than I did dealing with two by fours, but I had met some of these investors a couple of times on some of the jobs I was working on and they were driving nicer cars, they had nicer clothes they were smiling, they seemed somewhat happy and I hated them. They seem to be living a different life and I remember having a conversation with this one woman and this I will say with directness, she wasn’t that smart in the sense of she was just kind of like winging it and yet she was incredibly or appeared to be incredibly successful.
So when the stars are lined and it was a case of learning real estate fundamentals from the ground up starting with single family homes when I had an opportunity to learn that, I jumped at it my wife Mary Beth, we just picked 17 years of wedded bliss she and I went to that seminar together, and you know at the end of it, there was an investment in your education.
Invest in yourself, you invest you know, invest for a lifetime kind of content and I said, “What do you think it was like 30 grand for five classes or something.” It’s a lot of money to me and she said “Well, what do you think?” I said “well, I can’t keep doing what I’ve been doing, I know what the results of that are and they’re not joyous, they’re not serene.” You know, it’s hard I don’t want to live a hard life, I want to live a good life and she was really my first private private lenderm is what I called her because we put the classes on our credit cards, and I remember I was doing a training over the internet from Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands and just as I was telling that piece of the story on the zoom camera, my wife what she didn’t know, I was working she walked behind me with a big floppy hat a glass of red wine wearing a bikini heading to the beach and I thought to myself she got an ROI on her events.
So that’s where it started brother I started with single family homes and you know it I put some rocket fuel behind it and you know it took us to where we are today, so that’s kind of like the introduction to, Dave.
Yeah, no that’s good and I think you’re being modest Dave as well. So tell us a little bit about your, you know, career in the media as well as you know, Flipping Boston, that background.
Yeah, look, I, it’s interesting there’s a lot of negative connotation around real estate education and I’ll be frank with you. There are absolutely some straight up you know, snake oil salesman in that industry right? That really are, you can go on the internet today and you can get educated on anything for free.
However, education means absolutely zero if it’s not implemented with a result and for me I needed implementation so when I went to those those seminars and I got educated and learned fundamentals from people who were doing it because I actually did what I was trained to do rather than just I’m educated. I feel great about myself, well nothing freaking changes right?
I implemented what I was learning, I got recognized by these guys, so I then became an educator myself very quickly. They asked me they said “You know, your story resonates with people who are trying to make a change in their lives.” People work in 60, 70, 80 hours a week and just squeaking by, you know, why is that? Why is that acceptable and I got a good rapport with an audience, a good rapport with a crowd and because I was in that arena, in the education arena there were guys that were hanging around in those circles back then.
Gary Vaynerchuk, people know him as Garyvee today like he was he was starting out. He was in that momentum, that area another guy was ClickBank what the hell or Russell Brunson, was an entrepreneur. A lot of online entrepreneurs, e-commerce entrepreneurs, real estate entrepreneurs, so it’s interesting when you surround yourself with that kind of mentality. You kind of get it by osmosis right and I was a cool kid because I could close and resonate in with an audience.
Right, so they opened the doors and let me in and that crowd introduced me to an online application for a TV show in 2010 and it was just when real estate was contemplating. It wasn’t even there yet, it was contemplating doing flipping shows again because everybody was in real estate depression back then and I turned in an application online just for Esters and Giggles and I loaded the application with profanity and the reason that I did it was, well look here’s the thing.
I figure there’s going to be 30,000 applications for this thing right? Everybody wants their you know, their 10 minutes of fame. If you will, I did it for Esters and Giggles like, but the idea of actually doing a national TV show was just a joke to me. Like I watched these shows and I was negative, I picked them apart just like everybody else does right? But I know everybody will want to crack at it, a crack at the title so how could I separate myself from the crowd with an online vanilla application?
What do you talk about, how cool you are. I’ve got a private jet and a Rolls-Royce come film me. No, it gives a right, what I did was I loaded it with profanity, you know, name of your company go F-yourself LLC. You know, I just, it’s just stupidity and basically the catchphrase when I turned in the application to the production company. The last line was don’t call me, get on a plane train or automobile, come to Boston, I’ll show you how we really do it up here.
Like I fight fires when everybody else goes running out, we go running in. I do real estate the same way you know, “Don’t call me, F-off love Dave,” something like that, well they called within like 10 minutes after sending. It was a two or two, there’s a New York phone number and I picked up the phone name and I said “I thought I told you not to call me you butthole” and I hung up the phone.
Please call back, so look that’s how it started, I took a you know, I took a chance. I guess right, you take a chance, you put yourself out there, create a story around it, they came out, they filmed me and my ex-partner Pete messing around on a project somewhere that we were doing at the time and it’s funny.
A&E network their commentary back to the development company or the production company was that big english guy. Looks like he could get pretty angry, we’d like to see more of that, so there’s your inside scoop okay. Reality TV is not based in reality, you gotta bend reality to make a TV show and I’m a bit of a showman so you know, we stepped into it, we did great, we did Four Seasons 29 episodes. The only reason that it stopped being produced was there was some issues with intellectual property on the show that they needed to clear up and they cleared that up.
And by that time, once you fall out of that focus you know, I always say I’m hanging out in church basement smoking cigarettes with Dog the Bounty Hunter you know, that’s right and Billy the Bug Guy. So you know it, but here’s what was really good about it well it depends on how you look at good and bad maybe it’s all in perception right, as soon as you’re on a TV show you’re perceived to be an expert and because of the perception of being an expert that opened doors for me, that maybe some folks would have a harder time opening doors.
So you know, I’m very grateful for the time that I spent on that show. If you asked me to do it again tomorrow, I would tell you emphatically no, you know it’s just not part of my, it’s not part of my focus today. It was good, so yeah, you know it’s born from there and during that period of time I learned a lot you know, I learned a lot about the speed of real estate execution, good contracts, you know making sure that there weren’t skinny deals because we refused to lie with our numbers for the TV show.
Like we weren’t going to make anything up if it was a tight skinny deal we put it out there and said this was a tight skinny deal. Stuff happens you know, the ones where we make six-figure incomes on it, we get pride in putting that number out there to show that you know it does work with the right team around you and from there you know I was taking that capital and getting rid of some of the financial challenges.
I had personally and rolled that into multi-family smaller assets worked my way up over the past. I would say 10 years or so I had a nice portfolio up in Maine that I put together with another guy, I put up the money and the tax returns, he put up the the sweat and tears and dealt with the tenant base. That was a great thing. we we exited out of that portfolio we sold our last one last year, but it was like a ridiculous return it’s like a 700% return on the investment that we put in there.
Capital out of pocket, so you know, it’s been able to tick some pretty substantial boxes for me along the way. Lending have been a hard money lender, I’ve been a private lender, the hard money lending business went out of business pretty quick with covered. So you know, I’ve learned some lessons, I’ve learned from failures as much as I have from success, you know.
Yes, so that’s a great Point Dave, why don’t we talk a little bit about you know what you’re doing at Freedom Ventures now and you know given that you know lengthy, you know experience right? I mean you’ve really had you know quite a journey with multiple facets to it right?
But I know that you have a very strong ethos around, you know creating wealth for people and truly helping educate people right and you know getting out of you know risky things like the stock market educating them on investing in real assets and how it can really help build wealth so can you share a little bit of that ethos with us?
Yeah, look the, it was Obama put the, what was the jobs act, when Obama passed the jobs act, he really opened up a Pandora’s Box in both the negative and the positive for wealth creation. As I’m sure, I know you know, but maybe your listeners know, I don’t know up until that time the what we call Country Club deals right they’re the deals that go down on the ninth hole of the country club.
The Country Club deals were really pigeonholed for an elite group, we’ll just call them one percenters or quasi-institutional investors and those deals were really passed around a very small community of investors and when I talk about my background and financial illiteracy. It kind of, is a it’s a driving force and a passion for me today to be able to assist people similar to myself in wealth creation in looking at something other than what everybody else is doing right?
Why is it that multi-family syndicated real estate real estate transactions, why are they not part of a financial advisors offerings if you will? Why aren’t they a part of that they offer you know two times return on your capital over three to five years on a good deal. They’ve some of them in development where we work today, we look at three to four times equity multiples on capital invested.
Why isn’t that part of it, because it’s always been that way financial advisors, your Merrell Lynches your, you know, the rest of them you can watch any commercial out there. Fisher Investments, we do better when you do better. It’s all the same freaking thing man, it’s all marketing and spin. So you know the stock market, the 401K program, even government pension.
When I got educated on what other people were doing with my money I got a little annoyed there are hidden fees that are transacted with other people’s capital without other people’s permission. Hidden fees, meaning they don’t know they’re there and with real estate and my own personal journey I got to a point where I really had to look at it and take some ownership and for me personally I kind of had a moment of clarity if you will, where I said “You know what, I’m going to live or die by my own decisions.”
I’m going to educate myself, I’m going to be as as dialed in as I possibly can. I have my own risk aversion and then instead of standing there in fear which stands for false evidence appearing real instead of standing in that world. I’m gonna do what Warren Buffett said when everybody’s fearful be greedy and vice versa right? I’m gonna Implement and execute, and for me our investors that come on a journey with us primarily are accredited investors and we spend a lot of time educating them first.
Just because somebody says “I love you Dave” I saw you on a TV show I kind of get what you’re doing here’s a check for 500. I might, I may very well say “no wait a minute, we need to bring you up the gradient first so that you understand risk and reward.” Not just reward so often these Investments are sold on rewards only right without looking at the risk profile that is attached to it.
So if an investor doesn’t understand what an internal rate of return really is, if an investor doesn’t understand what a cap rate is in a specific Market, if they don’t understand liquid over illiquid Investments, you know so many people have held on to liquidity as their moniker for investing well liquidity defeats compounding returns. That’s why the stock market is, doesn’t outperform commercial real estate right, promotional real estate is how perform the stock market.
12 out of the last 15 years because human beings tend to have this this urgency to “Oh my God, it’s going down, pull the money out, oh my God it’s going up let’s sell it, pull the money out.” So as soon as money moves, it hasn’t a reaction it has a a consequence and most people don’t realize that the brokerage is the one that makes the money on a transaction because they do it on bulk volume right, if you’re making you know two points on a billion dollar transaction in and two points on a billion dollar transaction out and it happens in a nanosecond.
Trading money? Then somebody’s getting rich, and it isn’t Middle America, right? So, without me getting political and standing on my soapbox—you’re a bad man—you take me up so good. It’s like scratching the surface, but I’ve seen the results of 401k programs after 50 years of employment. That won’t take somebody to the finish line comfortably. No.
Who’s responsible for that? Two people: the investor, the individual, the employer, and then also the system. The 401k system, in my opinion, is not what it is portrayed to be. So, if I can educate the individual, if I can show them, “Look, in a development project, for example, let me show you the reasons why we feel it’s a good deal, and then let’s discuss it,” that’s kind of like the opening dialogue with an investor.
We do it through webinar formats; we do it through slide decks and information, etc., etc. But if I’ve got three hundred thousand dollars, I can do two things with it: I can leave it in the volatility of the stock market. I could maybe buy some commodities.
You know, gold is up, gold is down; oil is up, oil is down. We can ride those roller coasters as well. The bond market is inversed right now, which is kind of interesting, right? That’s not a good sign when the bond market is inversed. I’m learning that from my business partners.
So, you know, where can I get yield? First of all, what is a good yield? Are you excited with a five percent return? Are you excited with a seven percent return?
What if we could offer a six to eight percent preferred rate of return, inclusive of cash flow, as the building is built, then leased up and stabilized (as we call it)? Then, we sit in cash flow for maybe three years, two years. If the market’s great, we’ll sell it. If the market’s cool, we’ll cash flow.
It will sit in it. It always has the ability to create some kind of income, and then, when the timing is right, we liquidate and sell that asset. It targets out for that investor. Let’s say that investor put up $300,000. At the end of the whole investment, that investor, on a 3X or a three-equity multiple, would have the expectation of their $300,000 in principal coming back with $600,000.
So, that would be a 3X or three times the principal invested. Well, people look at that and say, “That’s not possible. That’s illegal.” No, it’s not. Welcome to the world of commercial real estate investing, right?
Being able to educate them to see the potential is critical. Once that light bulb goes off, it’s interesting how their focus narrows. I can’t say how many times I’ve said, “It’s not all or nothing; it’s this and that.”
Don’t liquidate everything just because my story sounds more enticing or, you know, greed-driven. Some people are just greed-driven, right? Be smart with your investments.
For me, there is nothing—I’ll give you a classic example, and then I’ll give back the mic, as they say. I sat down with one of our investors, a gentleman who has been in the printing business, like embroidery, and he’s got government contracts for police departments and sheriff’s departments.
He’s in the apparel business—embroidery and printing and stuff. I sat down with him at his office and was going through a presentation with him. He’s been receiving, I want to say, somewhere around a seven-and-a-half to eight percent return on an investment he’s had with us for about a year or so.
We were looking at the next investment. It was a little more—well, there were more angles attached to this investment. It was a development deal, not an existing structure, so we needed to walk through the timeline a little more so that he understood.
Basically, he said to me, “Dave, I understand the deal to a certain point.” Then he went zero degrees with me. He looked at me and said, “David, I’m investing in you. I’m investing in you and your team. The information you give me is great, but at the end of the day, I’m betting on the jockey, not the horse.”
That was kind of an eye-opener for me. At the end of the day, the investor has to trust us as the operator, as the general partner, to be invested in the deal as an LP (limited partner), taking out the position of the equity, and then trust that I can go and get the bank to also like the deal and bring in the rest of the capital on a construction deal.
We always say to the investors, “Here’s the way to look at it: we’re going to do 100 percent of the work, we’re going to give you, the investors, 70 percent of the profits, and we’ll take 30 percent of the profits. But I just want to make sure you understand, Mr. Investor, Mrs. Investor, we’re going to do 100 percent of the work. If you’re okay with that and you understand it, then come on board, and let’s go through the SEC compliance and documentation, etc.”
It’s exciting to know that you, as a GP, have the opportunity to impact not only their retirement but, think about it, if they stay in and work compounding returns, it’s something pretty cool for their kids, their grandkids, and maybe even a generation after that.
So, it’s an exciting business to employ people to build large structures. It’s an exciting business to assist investors along the way. But it’s a team-driven business; it cannot be an individual, one ego trying to run the whole show. It has to be a group effort to be successful.
And I love it. I freaking love it.
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Now, 100%, Dave. I mean, so many good points in there. Maybe let’s just go back and unpack a couple of those. I just really love, again, your ethos of trying to educate and help people to make the right decisions, as you said. Everyone has their own risk tolerance. They have their own perspectives in terms of how they’re investing.
I totally agree with you that 401ks and government-sponsored qualified plans are a significant problem in this country. People have been relying on those too much. We’re sitting in a time now where the market’s down 25 to 30 percent this year. But there’s also this element of control. When you put your money into a 401k, you have absolutely no control. The government is telling you when you can take it out, how much you can take out, and by the way, they’ll probably be increasing taxes by the time you take it out.
We’ve actually created a calculator for investors where we’ve modeled out if you take your 401k, pay your 10% penalty and taxes now, and invest it into something like a risk-adjusted return in multi-family, what that will do for you. It’s quite interesting because, depending on your assumptions, you can break even in just a few years. You can gain back control, increase your tax efficiency, and really accelerate your gains. When you start looking 10, 15, 20 years down the road, that’s pretty tremendous.
I also want to talk about your point of risk-adjusted returns as well. People who are uneducated about these types of investments say it sounds too risky because they don’t know enough about it. Meanwhile, they’ll invest through their financial planner without understanding all the complexities. Frankly, who could understand all the complexities of the market? A lot of it doesn’t make sense because it’s rigged.
Yeah, but you’re betting everything on the market, and things that don’t necessarily correlate. Something happens in China overnight, and it impacts your portfolio today. I’ve compared that to a real estate project like you’re talking about. You have direct control.
For example, you identify a property with a great return and get a great buy right out of the gate. You can make improvements like putting in a valet trash service and start increasing rents. You can add a parking lot that wasn’t there before. There’s so much creativity to it.
As you said, there’s a risk-adjusted return to it, which is really nice because you can factor in those returns over the long haul. You know you’re investing in a tangible asset with good macroeconomics that are in play.
Real estate never goes to zero. Even if it gets wiped off the face of the Earth, the insurance is in place because we have replacement costs. Businesses, however, will go belly up. Think about Enron—if you were an Enron client back in the day, you lost everything.
David, it feels like pushing a donkey up a hill when we’re talking about risk-adjusted returns, tax advantages, depreciation, and cost segregation. Some investors get a K1, and the tax advantages can be superior to the K1 returns. For some people, depending on their tax bracket structures, it’s essentially a tax-free investment.
These are common talking points for the wealthy. The conversations we have in our networks and groups treat it as common knowledge that tax advantages in real estate are superior to those of any other investment. We tend to take that for granted.
When having that conversation with an investor contemplating moving into this newer arena, I believe it needs to be done delicately and with patience. It’s not about hitting them over the head or pushing timelines that don’t make sense. We usually work within 14 to 21 days to help them understand the investment, have meaningful discussions, and ensure great communication with the team.
One thing I’m proud of is that we’re not too big to lose touch with our investor pool, but we’re also not too small to offer targeted 3x or 4x returns on investments. We have the capital partners to execute on those deals. Being in the middle market allows us to focus on workforce housing in the Florida marketplace, which is so under-supplied.
If something doesn’t make sense to people, they’ll do nothing. They’ll just stand still. For example, we’re working on a 16,000-square-foot mixed-use office retail space on McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers, Florida. An investor and I were discussing the deal, and he was contemplating putting in $100,000. I showed him the usage of capital, the cash flows, and how things would look at the two-year mark. This guy was super conservative—he was scared.
He said to me, “First of all, how are you making money?” There was a very small acquisition fee attached to it, and I explained, “We’re taking a small payday on this because we’re renting half of the second floor. I’m not going to juice my investors on the front end and get an office space out of it at the same time.”
Then he asked me, “What is the worst-case scenario? Tell me the truth, Dave.” I said, “If I’m SEC compliant, here’s the truth: You can lose every penny you put into an investment like this. You can lose every dime. But common sense tells you the worst-case scenario is break-even. We build the building, don’t increase the valuation, don’t put tenants in it, and sell it to the next investor. You get your money back.”
This guy was incredibly smart—a high-level executive. He said, “If all I’m going to do is break even, I might as well leave my money in the bank.”
I couldn’t leave it alone. I said, “Do me a favor. Google the inflationary rate right now. Jump on your phone and see what inflation is.” He Googled it, and it was about 8.5% or so, whatever the last number was.
I said, “So your capital is working against an inflationary rate of 8.5%. But the good news is your money in the bank—what’s that earning? It’s got to be at least 10%, 12%, maybe 15%, right?” He went, “Oh…” It was like I’d shoved the dagger in him. He’d been stuck in his box, seeing the world only through his perspective.
That lit the fuse for him to start asking more questions and seeking more information. He eventually invested with us on another deal.
Knowledge is the answer.
Yeah, it’s such a great point. In part of our wealth strategy, the first phase is really all about mindset, right? Because if you think you’re the smartest person in the room and you know everything, I mean, this isn’t for you.
You need to be able to challenge limiting beliefs and existing biases because the $30 trillion financial services industry has an agenda. They want you to think that the 401K is the only option.
It’s not until you start asking questions and drilling into the details, as you say, and getting educated on these assets that you can really determine, “Hey, I think this might make sense.”
But you have to start there; otherwise, you’re never going to make it out of the gates.
You just said something that I personally have tried to do my very best to live by, which is to never be the smartest person in the room. That doesn’t challenge anybody. If you are, and if you’re in that room just to be in that room, then that’s ego—ego standing for “edging God out.” There’s no grace in that.
I like to be around people who are a lot more oriented to specifics than I am. What I mean by that is I like to be around a crypto genius. Does it mean I’m going to invest in crypto? I still don’t understand it, and I’ve been around some really smart guys who are in blockchain investing. But guess what? If you want to come into my room, I’ve got development and multifamily real estate pretty much dialed in.
You know what I mean? Can I get better? Of course, I can—every single day. So I’m always looking to surround myself with smarter guys in the industry. From an investor standpoint, it really is: does the story make sense? Can I invest in the jockey? Not every deal is going to go exactly the way it was performed, and assumptions are just that—assumptions based on experience and projections.
Case in point, I was in Miami last week. We met with a large family office that just made a pretty nice investment into our Cape Vista project. I got to talk with these guys, and I immediately went to, “What are you doing?” They’ve got $2 billion under management, right? I want to know their game. What game are they playing? It’s just zeros—zeros at the end of the day—but there are a lot more zeros on their balance sheet than there are on ours.
It was so cool to learn. They’re building self-storage facilities in Europe because there is no self-storage chain as such in Europe. Over here, we know all our self-storage chains. You can rent the moving truck from the same place and go straight to the storage facility. But they double their yield because they’re doing it in Europe compared to the same project here in the U.S.
That stuff excites me, man—being around those kinds of people. How did you start? How do you manage it? How do you find your builders? You’re in Europe; they don’t work the same way we work. It’s just so interesting to listen to somebody else’s expertise and experience.
It’s the same thing in our world, right? The same thing in financial investing. I think there is definitely, and I always want to be conscious of this because I understand that world in the financial advisory space, but I think the day will come—maybe not in my lifetime, but definitely in the next generation—where there will be some symbiotic relationships between us in the alternative investment world and those in the financial advisory world.
There has to be because, at the end of the day, that world is going to run its course to some extent or another. You know what I mean? It won’t—or maybe it already isn’t—the only focus. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does, because the 60/40 model that they’ve had for so long, right—it’s completely upside down. All of the assumptions that have been made—the Monte Carlo simulation and “take out 4% a year”—it doesn’t necessarily make sense.
I think we’re seeing that now, Dave. I’ve had some portfolio managers and financial planners who’ve invested in our deals, and some portfolio managers are looking to actually add whole new verticals of alternative assets because they’re seeing it too.
Yeah, they’re progressive. If more of them did that, the investor would do better. I’m just going to make that statement. If there were more verticals into AI and the sticks-and-bricks solidity of investing in real estate transactions, I think—I know—the investor would do better because they’re not relying on just one thing.
It’s diversification again, right? It’s diversification inside diversification inside verification. I’m excited to hear you say that—that’s good news.
Yeah, so Dave, if you could just give one piece of advice to listeners about how they could accelerate their own wealth strategy and investing, what would it be?
That’s a great question. It’s got so many prongs attached to it. I always say, educate, educate, don’t speculate, and then implement. I know that seems super simplistic, but consider the source of the information that you’re getting. You can go on TikTok, Instagram, Snapity Chapity, and everywhere else these days and get a ton of information, but consider the source.
Ask great questions. Ask uncomfortable questions. If you ask the uncomfortable questions, you’ll see the response of the person you’re asking. You’ll challenge their thesis, challenge their integrity, challenge them. I love to be challenged.
If an investor is challenging their financial advisors or their operators, like us in commercial real estate, they will very quickly find out where they can risk-adjust their investments and create more wealth because they’ll feel good about it. It’ll feel right.
Even if it doesn’t perform as well as it’s targeted to perform—what if I only doubled your money in three years instead of tripled it—will you be unhappy? “No,” is what they say. I say, “Then good. This investment is for you. This investment is for you.”
So, ask those questions. Do the research. You don’t have to know everything to do anything, but you have to know enough to ask the right questions and then implement. That’s kind of my philosophy around it.
Yeah, I love it. Couldn’t agree more, Dave. If investors or anyone in the audience would like to reach out and learn more about what you’re doing at Freedom Venture, what’s the best place?
Yeah, freedomventure.com. Go straight to the website. There’s a ton of information on there. You’ll see the offerings that we have. We just put together a fund structure, the Suncoast Growth Fund, to replace some of the inventory that was taken away by Hurricane Ian right in the middle of our marketplace. We had to endure that.
You can actually reach me by calling the office at 781-922-4418. If you do reach out and you want to touch gloves with me, ask some questions, or get to know us a little more, I’m more than happy to take a call. Just let my office know that you heard me on Dave’s show here, or Google me—Dave Seymour, S-E-Y-M-O-U-R. I’m no longer on America’s Most Wanted, so we got that stuff pushed down. We’re good. You can find me, ask questions, man. Ask the questions. We’re here, we’re busy.
Yeah, awesome, Dave. We’ll put all of those contact details into our show notes today. I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and connecting with our audience. It’s always a pleasure to connect and learn more about what you guys are doing.
Dave, appreciate it, man. Thanks for the time.
You bet.